Dylan McNamara, director of School Psychological Services for the Burlington School District, poses for a portrait outside of a Burlington preschool on Monday. / MADDIE MCGARVEY/FREE PRESS

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Free Press Staff Writer

Two tips

In an online statement Sunday that circulated through Burlington’s Front Porch Forums, School District Superintendent Jeanné Collins offered two measures of practical advice for parents: • Check in with school offices whenever you enter a school, and direct anyone without an ID or visitor’s badge to the office; and • Review safety procedures with children — and be sure to help them identify at least one adult at school and in the community “to whom they go if they feel threatened or at risk.”

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Can children find a balance between grief and relief; between vigilance and dread?

Can adults?

In the wake of the mass shooting Friday in Newtown, Conn., Burlington educators are determined to help youngsters and their elders walk those fine lines.

For instance: primary students exposed to endless, repeated television coverage of the massacre might (unless coached otherwise) assume that the event is ongoing, Dylan McNamara, director of the district’s lead school psychologist, told the Burlington Free Press on Monday.

McNamara offered another example: A fourth-grade student Monday was convinced that the killer had gunned down babies.

The child’s news source, McNamara said, had featured an interview with a Newtown resident who had mourned the loss of “our poor babies.”

He and other school officials had just ended a regular monthly meeting of the district’s Safety Committee with members of the Burlington Police and Fire departments.

No new safety protocols were unveiled, McNamara said; everyone did a lot of listening, and everyone agreed that the schools’ primary task this week is “to clear up misconceptions, and to reassure students of their safety.”

Some riled responses to the highly publicized violence might be muted, he added. The district has reminded teachers, guidance counselors and nurses to remain alert “for kids who might have a more heightened or significant reaction” to the killings.

Drills and fortresses

Burlington schools are both prepared and endlessly preparing, District Superintendent Jeanne Collins told the Burlington Free Press on Monday.

“We’re on it,” Collins said. “We’re doing all that we can, and we’ll keep doing more.”

On Friday afternoon, she posted now-familiar discussion guidelines on the district website. Over the weekend, Collins and other officials convened to map out responses to anticipated surges in anxiety.

She said an important component to the strategy includes no-nonsense steps that must be taken to thwart random violence.

“Those things are now a part of our culture, just like fire drills were a part of yours and my culture,” Collins said. “We still do fire drills, but we also do lock-down drills and full evacuations. You plan and you practice your plan. We’re able to change course.”

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Some changes are likely to require spending on bricks-and-mortar upgrades.

“Our schools were designed 50 to 120 years ago — and they weren’t designed to keep people out,” Collins said.

“As we renovate a school, we can upgrade security, but we still have too many schools where a teacher has to step outside the classroom to lock the door,” she added. “Not all of our schools have offices that can monitor who’s walking in and out.”

Yet even a fortress can yield to a concerted siege.

“The parents who say, ‘How can you tell me the school is safe?’ — I have to say: It’s not,” Collins said. “But neither is the grocery store, or the university mall, — or your house.”

Pounds of prevention

Paul Irish, the school district’s information technology director and administrator of its Safety Committee, said the scale and rapidity of Friday’s school killings might prompt a discussion over the legal sale of assault-type rifles of the kind used by Adam Lanza in Newtown.

“There is no way you can plan for safety with that kind of weaponry around,” Irish said. “Anyone has access to guns that can throw out dozens of bullets a minute.”

In the interest of public safety, neither Irish, nor Burlington Police Chief Michael Schirling, would disclose how — or if — the school system might make tactical changes in how it would deal with a violent intruder.

Like Collins, the two men agree that preventative measures might yield the most promising results, even if their success goes unnoticed.

Schirling offered a starting point: A more energetic societal commitment to help those who struggle with mental health.

“As they say in Homeland Security, ‘If you see something, say something.’ Don’t be fearful that you’re the one to raise the yellow flag,” Schirling said. “It’s a collective effort. It takes everyone to create a fabric of safety.”